Middle East

Egypt’s military government has invited Hamas to move its headquarters to Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has invited Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal to move from Damascus to a new home based in Cairo, U.S. think tank Stratfor reported May 27. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that Mashaal has left Damascus and is moving to Egypt, according to IsraelNationalNews.com. Biblical prophecy indicates that Syria will move away from its alliance with Iran. Egypt, on the other hand, is prophesied to become a much closer ally to Iran. Hamas moving its headquarters to Egypt is symbolic of this shift.

On Sunday, Muslim Brotherhood sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his candidacy for the presidency of Egypt. He said that if elected he will implement sharia law and end Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. “The Camp David peace treaty is insulting to the Egyptian people, so it must be canceled, and I will do my best to convince people to cancel it,” he said at a mosque last Saturday. While a senior Brotherhood member has said Ismail is not an official member of the group, the new presidential candidate himself says he is a prominent Brotherhood figure on his official website. He was one of the Brotherhood’s candidates in Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary elections. Ismail’s announcement comes shortly after another Muslim Brotherhood member, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, announced his intention to run for president as an independent. It seems the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to distance itself from such candidates in order to appear to adhere to its pledge not to field a presidential candidate.

Iran stopped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane as it attempted to cross Iranian airspace on Tuesday, instigating a diplomatic row. Merkel’s plane was flying to India when it received a message that Iran had rescinded its permission for the plane to traverse its territory. “Iran’s move to hinder the chancellor’s trip is absolutely unacceptable,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle stated. The incident shows a growing rift between Germany and Iran. Despite U.S. and EU sanctions, until recently Germany was one of Iran’s most important trade partners. Now, German politicians are cracking down on Iran. Giant German corporations such as Siemens and ThyssenKrupp appear to have finally bowed to political pressure and are moving out of Iran, and Merkel recently announced that the Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (eih) would be shut down. According to Handelsblatt, Germany will no longer authorize the Bundesbank to approve any payments headed to Iran via the eih. According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Stuart Levey, the eih was one of the “few remaining access points to the European financial system.” Its closure will be a big blow to Iran. Expect Iran to lash out in response—and push the limits of European patience.

Iran has conducted work on technology to place nuclear material on a missile and detonate it, the International Atomic Energy Agency wrote in a nine-page report published May 24. The report also referred to evidence that Iran had begun “experiments involving the explosive compression of uranium deuteride to produce a short burst of neutrons.” This type of device would be used as a trigger for a nuclear bomb, a way of producing the neutrons necessary to start the nuclear chain reaction. Former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory Harold M. Agnew said, “I don’t know of any peaceful uses” of this devise. This is yet more evidence discrediting Iran’s claims that it is developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Tens of thousands of supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr marched through Baghdad on May 26 in a warning that they will restart the Shiite insurgency if U.S. troops do not leave Iraq by the end of the year. Sadr’s top aide, Salah al-Obeidi, reiterated the cleric’s promise to unleash his Mahdi Army if the December deadline isn’t met, saying, “We will be obliged to fight and do our best to liberate our country.” The anti-American Shiite cleric Sadr is backed by Iran and enjoys considerable support among Iraqis. His party’s support of Nouri al-Maliki was critical to the prime minister gaining a second term and forming a government last year. And this is the complication for America. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked Baghdad to host American troops in Iraq beyond the end of the year, the deadline stipulated in the current agreement between the two countries. While there is support among some Iraqi political groups for such an extension, it is widely opposed by Iraqi citizens—and Moqtada al-Sadr. America wants to stay in Iraq longer in order to maintain stability and counteract Iran’s growing influence. In a paper released last week, defense analyst Frederick Kagan argued that without a continued U.S. presence, Iraq would be vulnerable to attack by Iran. “The Iraqi Security Forces will not be able to defend Iraq’s sovereignty, independence from Iran, and internal stability without American assistance, including some ground forces, for a number of years,” he wrote. As the Trumpet has long said, Iran will cement its takeover of Iraq once the U.S. leaves. Washington is now desperately trying to delay this eventuality.

Europe

German federal police have been training Saudi Arabian forces in how to deal with protests, according to a report by Fakt shown on German television on May 30. Officially, the police officers are aiding in border security, but the report reveals classified documents and anonymous German police saying that their job goes beyond the official government description. Trumpet columnist Robert Morley wrote this week, “As we see Saudi Arabia and the other [Gulf Cooperation Council] member states seek to incorporate more allies to protect themselves from Iran, also watch for them to begin reaching out to Germany and the Europeans for protection.” We can see this happening already.

Malta is on its way to becoming the final EU nation to legalize divorce after voters approved of it in a national referendum on May 28. Seventy-five percent of eligible voters turned out to vote, approving divorce by 53 percent to 46. The Maltese Parliament will have to approve legalized divorce before it passes into law. European nations are still drifting slowly away from the Catholic Church, but expect that trend to reverse in the near future.

Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Greece’s credit rating from B1 to Caa1 on June 1. It points out that historically, half of all countries that have been downgraded this far have defaulted. On May 29, tens of thousands of Greeks protested against government plans to gut the country’s budget even further. A crowd of around 30,000 filled the square in front of the Greek Parliament, chanting “Thieves! Thieves!” Every week, Greece appears to be getting closer to default.

Asia

Moscow will finalize a gas supply agreement with Beijing by June 10 to supply 68 billion cubic meters of gas each year to China, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said Tuesday. Under the agreement, Russia, the world’s largest gas producer, will supply China with the designated quantity of gas each year for 30 years. “By June 10, Gazprom (Russia’s gas export monopoly) and Chinese cnpc (China National Petroleum Corporation) will finalize talks and prepare a commercial contract,” Sechin said after a round of negotiations with his Chinese counterpart. The two sides plan to finalize the pricing for the deal when Chinese President Hu Jintao visits an economic forum in St. Petersburg on June 10. Moscow and Beijing are also expected to reach an agreement by the end of the year to build a joint oil refinery. Exporting such substantial quantities of gas to China will free Russia from its export dependency on the European market, and bolster the relationship between Russia and China.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a no-confidence vote on Thursday which opposition parties cast against him because of dissatisfaction with his handling of the March 11 natural disasters in Japan. He survived the motion by agreeing to resign as soon as Japan’s efforts to recover from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis take firm hold. “Mr. Kan agreed to step down after the passage of a special disaster budget and legislation to smooth reconstruction,” said Yukio Hatoyama, Kan’s predecessor and Democratic Party leader. “Kan won a measure of confidence but only on the condition that he won’t last long,” said Steven R. Reed, a political science professor at Chuo University. Kan is Japan’s fifth prime minister since 2006, and the majority of Japanese people were opposed to his leaving office right away. This is because they crave stability. This desire may eventually prompt the people of Japan to exchange democratic principles for a new kind of leadership and to tolerate a more authoritarian figure.

Africa/Latin America

The government of South Africa agreed this week to closer relations with China in an effort to combat crime. South African Police Minister Maggie Sotyu met with the Chinese vice minister of public security on Monday. “Our main relationship with China is trade,” said Sotyu. “They are our number one trade partners, but China felt that we needed to go beyond trade and we needed to deal with the issues of crime.” Cooperation with regards to police training and the possibility of exchanging knowledge between the police forces of both countries formed the basis of the talks. Expect China’s interest in South Africa to magnify Beijing’s voice in sub-Saharan affairs.

The stock exchanges of Chile, Colombia and Peru officially combined into a new South American Stock Exchange on Monday. This new market, called the Integrated Latin American Market (mila), will start with a listing of 560 companies and will overtake Mexico as the largest stock market in Latin America. The launch of the new market doesn’t mean the disappearance of each country’s local exchange, but it means the creation of a new multi-border stock exchange that will provide an additional platform for companies to access investor capital.

Anglo-America

As of the second quarter of 2010, 352,000 homes in the UK contain families in which no one has ever had a job, according to figures published by the Office of National Statistics. This number has nearly doubled since the second quarter of 1997, when it stood at 184,000. These figures show that a shocking number of families are simply taking money from the government and not working.

Over one in five 18-to-34-year-olds in the UK are living with their parents because they cannot afford to buy their own home, according to a YouGov poll conducted by the charity Shelter. It also reports that one in five is delaying having children until he can afford to pay rent or buy a house. “Yes, housing has always been a major expense, but never before has a generation been faced with having to pay such a high proportion of their spending on a home of their own, whether renting or buying,” said Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb. The study shows how Britain’s declining economy is impacting the lives of many young people.

Over 1 million hospital visits were caused by alcohol over a 12-month period in 2009-2010 in England, according to the National Health Services Information Center’s annual report. This is over double the number for 2002-2003. These figures show how chronic Britain’s alcohol problem is.

On May 27, a British court ruled that a burglar sentenced to eight months in prison should go free in order to look after his five children. The burglar, the court ruled, had a right to a private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The burglar claimed he had no one else to look after his children, despite the fact that he has both a wife and ex-partner. An immigration tribunal also ruled that a former bodyguard for Robert Mugabe who tortured people should be allowed to remain in Britain indefinitely, because deporting him would violate his human rights. It ruled that the man could face torture if he returned and therefore should remain in the UK. These examples are just two of many injustices in Britain because of the European Convention on Human Rights.

British Prime Minister David Cameron stepped down from being a patron of the Jewish National Fund (jnf) recently as part of a general review of charities. Commentator Melanie Phillips writes that this decision “is the latest act of aggression against Israel by [Her Majesty’s government], and is particularly offensive.” The Prime Minister’s Office claims the decision was made because of Cameron’s workload, not politics. Nonetheless, at best it shows that Israel is now a low priority for Britain. Historically, leaders of all three of Britain’s major parties have been patrons of the jnf, but now none of them are.

Representatives for Internet search engine Google said this week that hackers in China have compromised the personal e-mail accounts of hundreds of top U.S. officials, military personnel and journalists. The U.S. company said this cyber-campaign originated in China’s Jinan province and targeted Chinese political activists as well as key officials in America. In Washington, bbc correspondent Adam Brooks says it is extremely difficult for analysts to determine whether governments or individuals are responsible for such attacks, but the fact that the victims were people with access to sensitive, even secret information, raises the possibility that this was cyber-espionage.

The Australian economy has reported its biggest quarterly fall in gross domestic product in 20 years, according to the latest government statistics. The economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the first three months of the year compared with the previous quarter. The government has said that severe flooding and cyclone damage in the resource-rich states of Queensland and Western Australia was largely responsible for this drop. The drastic increases in natural disasters around the world are set to have devastating effects on many economies.

Australians last year lost close to $1,300 on gambling for every resident (not including tourists) age 17 and over, according to international gaming industry consultants H2 Gambling Capital. This statistic places Australians in the lead as the world’s biggest gamblers. The Australian gambling industry, with clubs, hotels and casinos, employs about 160,000 people. “Problem gamblers routinely lose everything, including their jobs, family and friends, homes, minds and sometimes even their lives,” says Tasmanian Independent MP Andrew Wilkie. This problem is having a devastating effect on thousands of people across the social spectrum. The bottom line is that any and all forms of gambling corrode our character to one extent or another—and that’s why gamblers always lose, even when money is won (seldom as that is).